


Burning Yesterday

by ThisDominionIsMine



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Arson, Cuddles, Fluff, Gen, Hale fire, pack!feels, srs implications
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-01
Updated: 2012-10-01
Packaged: 2017-11-15 10:51:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/526489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisDominionIsMine/pseuds/ThisDominionIsMine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt: flicker. The Hale house burns down for a second time on a bitter November day when everything is cold and clear and crisp, and there isn’t a cloud to be seen for miles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burning Yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm sick with an especially nasty cold, and my best friend fired a bunch of prompts my way to give me something to do, and this one got a little wild.  
> Prompt: flicker  
> Cross-posted on Tumblr at thewinstonisin

The Hale house burns down for a second time on a bitter November day when everything is cold and clear and crisp, and there isn’t a cloud to be seen for miles. It is the fifth anniversary of Kate Argent’s death. Stiles has just gotten out of his Mythology class when Chris calls him: Gerard is missing, and so is half a dozen gallons of lighter fluid from their stockpile of supplies.

“Derek isn’t answering his phone,” he says.

“Gerard’s gone completely off the rails,” he says.

“Can you hear me, Stiles?” he says.

Stiles slams on the brakes just in time to avoid read-ending the blue Duster that cuts in front of him. “I’m on my way.” He doesn’t mention where he’s going. He doesn’t need to.

Nobody calls 911. It’s irrelevant. Stiles doubles the speed limit all the way to the Hale house, and still finds it blazing when he roars up the driveway, while Gerard howls his mad, gleeful last from within. Flames are licking out the basement windows, just like they did a dozen years before.

Stiles climbs out of his Jeep on shaky legs, drops to his knees as soon as he gets close enough for the heat to shove back against his skin. “Derek?” he murmurs.

A heavy weight sinks onto the ground next to him. “I dug a tunnel out, when I first came back here.”

“I knew it.” Eyes on the fire, Stiles reaches out, groping blindly until Derek catches the searching fingers in his own and pulls himself against Stiles, shoulder-to shoulder, ribcage-to-ribcage. He is rock-solid, far past frozen, a direct contrast to the shaky frisson working itself out through Stiles’ limbs. “No; that’s a lie. I didn’t know. I thought…” He doesn’t say what he thought.

Derek threads their fingers together and hangs on like Stiles is his lifeline.

Even after one partial razing, the Hale house is big, and their inexpert repairs and shore-ups have returned at least part of its former strength. By the time Chris arrives in his big, bulky SUV, the only thing to fall is the man who supplied half his DNA. There is only the sound of burning to be heard. He sits on the hood of his truck and watches the smoke curl up into an exclamation point, studies how it softens into a comma as the wind buffets it off to one side. Allison is with him, but she stays in her seat, buckled in, eyes bright, but not crying.

Scott and Isaac come together, not long before the main staircase finally collapses. They sit on Derek’s other side, though Scott reaches around him to touch Stiles’ shoulder once, briefly, when the exterior wall nearest them cracks, splinters, and comes down in a roar of sparks.

Boyd and Erica howl together, miles off, from where they’re running with their new pack. When Derek hears their acknowledgment, his neck muscles give out, and he curls his knees up to his chest, crushing Stiles’ hand in his. Stiles grips him back without remorse.

After that, the fire engines are only minutes in coming. The porch is being devoured as the scream up onto the lawn, though, and even once they disembark, the supposed rescuers do little more than stand and watch. One, a broad-shouldered, dark-skinned woman, comes over to the line of huddled figures sitting off to the side, and asks what they’re doing.

“This is Derek Hale,” Scott says, setting a hand on his shoulder.

The firefighter nods. “My condolences, sir… I was here the first time, too. It was a beautiful house.”

Derek croaks emptily, and nods back at her. It seems at thought that’s enough, because she turns to go, before pausing. “Vendettas are hell, aren’t they?”

This time, when Derek makes a noise, he sounds like he’s dying, and the woman is back amongst her fellow firefighters, watching the inferno in solemn silence.

It takes hours for the blaze to die down enough that dousing it with water will have any effect, and the sun is setting by the time the last flames are guttering out amongst smoking beams and heaps of ash. Nothing more than a few feet in height remains. Tomorrow, the police will sift through the ruins, find Gerard’s body, and gradually being piecing together evidence of his final moments. Stiles will have to keep an eye on his father for the next few days, both to poke him in the right direction, and to stop him from arresting the wrong people.

In the meantime, though, once the coals have stopped glowing he drives Derek back to their apartment, forces him to eat a sandwich compiled from odds and ends in the fridge, and climbs into bed next to him afterwards. They lie in silence, both reeking faintly of smoke, until Scott and Isaac turn up to pile in with them. It’s too many bodies on one bed, then, and the smoke-scent remains, but there’s leather, too, from the jackets the pack is so fond of, and Scott’s standard overdose of deodorant, and the general warm animal smell that he and Isaac both carry after working at the clinic. Derek is still an immobile mountain with them all curled around him, but he’s softer at the edges, and when Stiles kisses his forehead, he tugs him closer instead of pulling away, and ducks his head down against Stiles’ shoulder. He sighs quietly.

When the arson investigators find Gerard’s body in the morning, he is lying under the ashes of the main staircase, burned into a mass of crusted red meat, unidentifiable except through dental records, and he is bound in the melted remnants of electrical wiring, eyeballs melted from their sockets, with just enough flesh left on his face to see how freakishly his mouth was contorted by his last, terrified scream.


End file.
